'Why I Was Afraid To Use Gym Locker Rooms During My Gender Transition'

Growing up, my sense of gender was in many ways more secure than it was in my later childhood and teen years. I knew I was a girl from the second I understood gender. I was absolutely certain that one day my body would get the hint and it would somehow transform itself. Unfortunately, that didn't work out the way I'd hoped. Elementary school was the first time I experienced the idea that I needed to use the public facilities assigned to the gender I was perceived to be by others. In second grade, the bathroom, a place for privacy and bodily functions, became a place for name-calling and physical assault.

This continued throughout middle school. Often, I’d use the stalls instead of the urinal. My gender dysphoria, intensifying with age, made me increasingly uncomfortable in a male space, so I would seek the anonymity of a Formica cubicle and a door.
One time, I ducked in about 10 minutes before lunch ended. I quickly made my way into the stall and sat down. Then I heard a boy come in. He knocked on the stall door and asked who was in the stall, which is when my heart started racing. I recognized his voice as one of the boys who was particularly nasty to me. I didn’t answer. "That you, Levinson?” he said. “That you, faggot?” He exited, and I breathed a sigh of relief, at least until he swiftly reentered with a gang of about five boys all ready to torture me. I stayed in the stall, silent, terrified, and trapped. The bell rang and they didn’t leave. Finally, feeling I had no choice, I exited the stall. One of the boys shoved me into the sink while the others spewed hatred at me.

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This kind of struggle wasn’t confined just to the bathrooms. It was a problem in any gendered space, including high school gym class. This escalated to a point where during my freshman year of high school, I stopped going to gym altogether, making me one of the only students who managed to fail phys-ed.

My fear of gym classes led me to put on over 100 pounds. By my early twenties, my weight hit an all-time high of 257 pounds and my mood hit an all-time low. Depression, much of it brought on by my undealt-with gender issues, led to binge eating, binge drinking, and a sedentary lifestyle. It was always hard to care about my body when, for me, my body and the way I was perceived socially felt so alien.

I had gotten to a point where I couldn't see my life going past 30. The depression and anxiety was too much too bear. At 24, I had hit rock bottom and I knew I had a choice to make. I could end things, either outright or by continuing to live an unhealthy lifestyle. Or I could transition and live authentically. Thankfully, I chose the latter.

I started going to the gym at least four days a week, often more than that. I have metabolic syndromand was teetering on the edge of diabetes, so I shifted my diet and cut out simple carbohydrates and sugar in an effort to lose some weight before I was scheduled to start hormone-replacement therapy.

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Between August and December of 2014, I lost 50 pounds. The increased activity, and focusing on the fact that soon I’d be on the path to living authentically, helped lift my mood and encouraged me to keep going. However, as my body began to change, I began to feel more afraid to use the gym. Soon after I started the hormone-replacement therapy, I began to become more androgynous. Psychologically, fear began to creep in. I knew that, legally, I was largely unprotected. And the gym I was a member of at the time didn't have a trans-inclusive policy—so I was afraid that men in the gym would target me. I was also afraid that, while I didn't quite read as male, I didn't quite read as female, either—and that if I used women's spaces at the gym, the management would get complaints and I would get thrown out.

While some gym chains have outright trans-inclusive policies, others have no policy or leave the decision up to each individual fitness center. Just thinking about the idea of engaging in a conversation with the manager of the gym about my transition practically gave me a panic attack, so that spring, I stopped going all together. Over the first year of my transition, I put back on 30 pounds.

Many of us have complicated relationships with our bodies, and for me, it was far too easy to not take care of myself physically. After all, I had a history of discrimination in locker rooms and bathrooms and felt extremely uncomfortable with my physical self.

After about two years into my medical transition, in May of 2016, when I had met most of my transition goals, I began to feel more comfortable in my own skin and how I would be perceived by others. I was at a point where I had "passing privilege," an advantage some trans people have because they "pass" or "blend in" as cisgender—so they're less likely to experience discrimination because their transness is less visible. (An important aside here: It’s not everyone’s goal to attain this "passing privilege" at all. I’ve still met many people, trans and cis, who think that’s the goal, but the truth is that the goal is to feel comfortable, authentic, and true to whatever you want out of your own transition, whether that includes medical intervention, surgery, or even just a haircut. Sometimes, "passing privilege" is just what happens.)

Still, once I had reached that point where I felt people would read me as female, I began to feel more comfortable going to the gym again. I decided again to make my health a priority. I started watching my carbohydrate and sugar intake, and with the confidence that no one would complain about my presence, I went back to the gym several times a week. Over the last year and a half, I’ve lost more than 40 pounds and counting.

What’s still disheartening, though, is that I had to get to the point of having "passing privilege" in order to feel comfortable enough to take care of my health again. With bathroom bills being tossed around among legislatures, it scares me to imagine any more people experiencing what I did and having their mental and physical health suffer for it.

No one should have to risk feeling uncomfortable getting to a gym in order to run on a treadmill. No one should have to ask for permission to wash their face in the locker room after a hard workout. The way we feel about our bodies—whether transgender/gender non-conforming, or cisgender—is already complicated enough. Where we change for our workouts or choose to pee doesn’t need to be, too.

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